The present invention relates generally to the field of database testing, and more specifically to dynamically prioritizing test cases in a relational database system.
A relational database is a digital database whose organization is based on the relational model of data. The relational model organizes data into one or more tables (or “relations”) of rows and columns, with a unique key for each row. Generally, each entity type described in a database has its own table, the rows representing instances of that type of entity and the columns representing values attributed to that instance. Because each row in a table has its own unique key, rows in a table can be linked to rows in other tables by storing the unique key of the row to which it should be linked. The unique key of the row to which another row should be linked is referred to as a foreign key. With regards to relational databases, test cases correspond to individual tables from within the relational database that will be tested to determine the database's stability. Database commands are executed with relation to the test cases, and if the results of these commands are as expected, then the database may be considered to be functioning properly.